According to local radio, the veterans’ petition reads that
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn “played a large role in the unjust
blackening of our historical motherland, the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics, and his input into the process of USSR’s
collapse was immense.”

The signatures for the petition are being collected on and
offline. The local branch of the Communist Party and the
relatively young movement Essence of Time are helping in the
process.

Essence of Time, headed by former stage director and TV show host
Sergey Kurginyan, is promoting the restoration of the Soviet
Union on the basis of a union between Communists and the Russian
Orthodox Church.

Apart from the promotion of their petition in the mass media, the
veterans sent open letters with similar demands to the regional
governor, the city mayor and the chairperson of the city
legislature.

The initiative to install the monument to the late Nobel
Prize-winner Solzhenitsyn in Togliatti was put forward in
December last year by the local group uniting the victims of
political repressions. When the head of the group first reported
the news, she presented it as a fait accompli, saying that the
monument would be located in the central park of the city and
that the collection of funds for the memorial was already
underway.

The activists also asked local authorities to rename one of city
parks or boulevards after Solzhenitsyn, but this request was
turned down.

Currently there are two monuments to Solzhenitsyn in Russia – one
in Rostov-on-Don and the other in Belgorod. Solzhenitsyn, who
lived many years abroad after his exile from the USSR in 1974,
returned to Russia in 1994 and lived near Moscow until his death
in 2008.

The writer is buried on Donskoye Cemetery in Moscow. On the day
of his burial, Russian authorities issued a decree on the
immortalization of Solzhenitsyn’s memory, and the Moscow
government renamed Big Communist Street in the city as
Solzhenitsyn Street. There are also schools and libraries named
after the writer across Russia as well as two museums of his life
and work.

Anti-Solzhenitsyn sentiment is nothing new, as the street
renaming in Moscow was also met with minor protests. Nostalgia
for Soviet times remains strong – a public opinion poll conducted
by the Levada Center in December 2013 showed that about 57
percent of Russians regret the collapse of the USSR, while only
30 percent harbor the opposite feelings.

The share of those who miss the Soviet Union is much higher among
the older generation: 86 percent among those 55 and older and
only 37 percent among those between 25 and 39.

The poll also showed that 53 percent of Russians think that the
collapse of the Soviet Union could have been avoided.